Originally published at: Colbert marvels as Flordia's surgeon general makes no sense | Boing Boing
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I love Colbert and as fun (and righteous) as it is to criticize Florida and its idiotic government officials, I still didn’t really enjoy this clip for a couple of reasons:
According to The NY Times covid tracker, Florida currently has a daily case rate of 263 per 100,000 and a daily death rate of 0.10 per 100,000. New York currently has a daily case rate of 342 per 100,000 and a daily death rate of 0.51 per 100,000.
So what the hell is Colbert doing having a live studio audience right now?. He opened the show saying “I’m so glad to see all of y’all being here tonight!”
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Great point, but Florida’s Covid numbers are especially suspect.
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Yeah, I’m sure they’ve fudged the numbers a lot but unless they’re reporting less than 1 in five deaths New York still appears to be worse right now.
What is certain is that the current reported NY case rate is at an all-time high. Way higher than it was at any point of the duration of when they were filming the show without an audience.
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As a graduate of the University of Florida, I assure you there are plenty of intelligent folks in Florida. It’s just that most of them are not in government.
Also…Carl? Why not just show the school mascot, Albert E. Gator?
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I agree, especially since Seth Meyers just tested positive…
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Apparently Colbert is dead set against returning to a smaller space to film the show.
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They could just keep it at the theater but with no audience. Or a staff audience. Jimmy Kimmel was doing that for awhile.
A masked, vaccinated audience would keep risk down compared to general public, unmasked.
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He did talk about how much he hated doing it in the “closet” upstairs… He seems like a performer who really pulls on the energy of the audience… but it does not seem particular safe right now to keep on doing a live audience.
That’s a decent compromise, I think.
That’s the plan it seems…
I think the problem is that the Ed Sullivan is much larger than the space that Meyers/Ruffin or Kimmel film, so it will be weirder.
You do have to be masked and vaccinated to get into any of them, as far as I know… I’m not sure about Kimmel, as that’s out in LA, though, while the others are NYC.
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…and Jimmy Fallon
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Oh, his comments get far worse on that subject…
The not going back bit… 
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Oops, my new browser needs a refresh! 
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wasn’t de santis complaining just the other day that the problem was that there was too much testing testing going on? or did i imagine it?
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I think it was the idiot state surgeon general talking about getting out of the testing mentality.
Maybe both have blathered similar bullshit.
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Unfortunately, CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky who was just on Colbert is a real expert, but is giving some less than ideal advice to the general public, saying that 5 day isolation is the standard because 80-90% of your transmissibility is in the first days. Then she says tests at the end aren’t needed because that’s not what the antigen tests are best at, but if you do have a negative antigen test, you should still consider yourself infectious. Er, so 5 days isn’t really a safe isolation period.
Then, the US plans of making 500 million rapid antigen tests available instead of sending out respirator grade N95s to everyone. By the time you test positive you are already infected and have likely infected others. Free home tests are window dressing on a failed program of prevention that is still flinching from MAGA idiots.
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The number of folks who know better joining the ones normalizing getting sick are increasing, and making me increasingly irritated because it’s irresponsible and dangerous. I have the same reaction every time someone promotes Broadway shows, eating in restaurants, and other indoor gatherings. They argue about wanting to have fun or needing to “get back to normal” because of pandemic fatigue. My response is always the same, “Viruses don’t get tired.”
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But one is giving people ammunition for not getting vaccinated. While it’s true we need to avoid indoor crowds, saying that the vaccine is literally ineffective is driving further mutations.
She is never going to win here. She’s fucked whatever she says. And we all know it, because there is a not insignificant minority of our population that refuses to get vaccinated and refuses to take ANY medical advice for experts. It seems like she’s attempting to meet some halfway, given the real damage this has done to the economy and how that’s actually hurting real Americans and how the GOP is doing all the can to support the American public financially through this pandemic.
But sure, let’s rip her to shreds, that will help.
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Let’s not leave out that 30% of patients remain contagious beyond 5 days. In medicine, 70% correct is never acceptable. We are talking about people’s lives.
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True enough. But I think Dr. Walensky is doing the best she can in a situation where she is probably getting constant death threats as well as constant threats to her job.
I don’t know how to fix that, but attack her seems not particularly helpful… Maybe that’s just me.
Then again, maybe we need to stop trying to compromise with corporate interests and right wing lunatics and move forward with a science based approach… but who knows what that would bring.
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